Mike: There's a lot more going on at the beginning of the game, and the main "reason for being" of the three species changes drastically throughout the experience:

The planet LV-742 is at the start of a massive colonization effort by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation (WY) after they found the planet to be rich in mineral ore. WY had then partnered with the USCM to supply a large force of Colonial Marines in support of this effort. The player of the Marine campaign starts out as a small part of this huge effort, as a modest squad on a routine patrol. Extraterrestrial beings were not part of the plan. Violent outbreaks, first by Aliens, and then by Predators, throw the human colonization into chaos. After a few of these discoveries, the Marine player will start to learn that all isn't as it first seemed, and that mining is not the real focus of the colonization effort.

At the same time the Marine campaign begins, the Predator campaign starts out as a series of sporting hunts to collect Trophy Skulls. But when the player's Clan uncovers another rival Clan, mysterious ancient Predator activities, plus the type of operations some of the humans are undertaking, the Hunts are no longer for sport. The Hunts become geared toward protecting the existence of the Clan and then ultimately, the integrity of the entire Predator race.

The Aliens start out doing what they do: spread and propagate. By piecing together events that happen, the player of the Alien campaign will learn how the Aliens actually got to LV-742, the sinister reasons why they are there, and how the very nature of the Alien species is in jeopardy

IGN: How will these scenarios be intertwined?

Mike: In many ways, what the player does in one campaign will influence the situations in one or both of the other campaigns, and vice-versa.

For just one example: One of the objectives in the Marine campaign is to capture a live Predator. In the Predator campaign, this act generates the need to break into the lab where the captured Predator is being held, and once the Predators learn the fate of their fellow Clan member (which the Marines don't know about), it spurs profound repercussions in the way the later Marine campaign will shake out. Also, with the Predator player breaking into and shooting up the lab, it gives the Aliens who are imprisoned there certain opportunities in the Alien campaign that wouldn't have occurred had the Predators not broken into the lab in the first place; and it goes around and around some more on just this one thread.

In other words, things the player does will have a cascading domino effect between the campaigns that wraps them up into one thing, that is, if you're paying attention to what you're doing!

IGN: What kinds of missions can we look forward to?

Mike: Lots. We all have lots of RTS experience, so a lot of thought was put into balancing the units. When we designed the units, we included lots of strong counters and scissors-paper-rock relationships that come together into a kind of organic whole at the end. Upgrades often change these relationships, making upgrade strategies pretty critical to success. There is also a supply system to keep the top-end uber-units from dominating.

Finally, we have a four different damage types: raw, fire, kinetic and acid. There are armor types to match them all, save raw, which is unblockable. This enables us to make it pretty clear that is good against whom. We even include an in-game bestiary that spells all this out in as much detail as a hardcore fan could ever want!

To make this all work, we built a special test version of the game that simulated battles between all of the units in the game a spit out huge charts that allowed us to tweet the units. We ran this test machine for weeks simulating hundreds of thousands of battles until we got all the data that we needed. We called this machine "The special machine that simulates thousands of battles"

IGN would like to thank Mike Arkin, Zono Inc., and Electronic Arts for their time and assistance with this interview. Kudos guys!